Serachtuague Pearl
by titaniasfics
Summary: A magic spring. A disappearance. A revolution. An epic romance. After a 20 year silence, newly widowed Katniss Hawthorne reveals the truth behind her mysterious three-year disappearance during her honeymoon with newly wed Gale Hawthorne. Events come to a head when Katniss makes a discovery that will bring her past and future crashing together. Written for S2SL.


The moon hung low in the horizon, a shining pearl that gleamed bright against the velvet backdrop. Stars dotted the indigo sky, their light sparkling like diamonds on the placid surface of the dark spring hiding in the shadows below.

Peeta stood at the crest, looking over the valley, searching. His kilt fluttered softly in the warm evening breeze, the hem flipping just enough to give Katniss a teasing glimpse of the strong thighs she knew were hidden beneath. The Clan Mellark plaid casually thrown over his shoulder was still held in place by the simple clasp she had fashioned for him using horn from the stag she had taken down with her bow shortly after arriving...here, wherever, whenever it was.

Crystalline blue eyes shone bright in the moonlight as they landed upon where she stood in the meadow below. Recognition blazed in their depths as he started towards her with wide, purposeful strides. The lace cuffs of his linen shirt were pushed up to his elbows, affording Katniss a view of Peeta's gloriously toned forearms, forged by years of sword play, making her pulse quicken as he neared.

 _'Mine,'_ the fiercely possessive look on his face made her breath hitch in her throat. She knew what it meant, and the resulting rush of desire low in her belly left her light-headed and aching for his touch. Trembling, she waited for him to finally reach her, anticipating the moment when he would take her in his arms, and make her forget her own name.

Soon, and yet not soon enough, Peeta stood before her, his mouth quirked into the half-smile that melted her inhibitions like butter. His eyes bored into hers, promising delights soon to come. Like a moth to a flame, Katniss felt herself being drawn to the sparkling blue depths, unable to resist the allure of his powerful body.

With slow tenderness, Peeta reached out, and brought her hand to his lips for a feather-light kiss to her palm. The seemingly innocent gesture sent bolts of liquid fire racing through her veins, making her skin tingle with awareness, causing her nipples to tighten into sensitive buds.

Still holding her hand, Peeta leaned close enough that she felt the caress of his warm breath over her neck.

" _Mo dubh_ ," he whispered before playfully nipping the soft lobe of her ear.

Katniss moaned and swayed towards him as he finally released her, carding his hands through her hair, loosening the dark strands from her braid. He painted her jaw with kisses as soft as dandelion fluff, carefully avoiding her lips and driving her into a frenzy of need. Her own hands worked their way over Peeta's back, pulling their bodies together as her short nails dug into the soft skin of his spine, eliciting hearty growls of pleasure from his throat. She could feel the hardened length of him pressed up against her belly, long and thick, and pushed back against him, crushing her breasts to his chest in a desperate attempt to feel more.

With a speed that took her breath away, Peeta scooped Katniss up into his arms, and carried her deeper into the meadow, where the honeysuckle grew haphazardly among daisies and clover. Setting her back down on shaky legs, he skillfully pulled the plaid off his shoulder to spread it upon the dewy ground.

"Come, me black-haired lass," he urged as he sat upon the baby-fine wool, waiting for her with an outstretched hand.

Katniss was incapable of resisting, practically falling into his embrace as his strong hands pulled her down and underneath his powerful body. The movements caused her hide leggings to rub against the increasing wetness between her legs, and her hips arched upwards in response, desperate to connect to the hardness she'd felt before, now poorly concealed by his kilt.

"Oh, Peeta!" she cried out, her actions earning a throaty groan in response as he pushed back against her waiting heat.

Katniss was on the brink of exploding when he hooked his foot around her calf, and with skill learned over years of sparring with his brothers, flipped them so that she now straddled his hips. With a tug on the end of her unraveling braid, he pulled her close to capture her mouth in a searing kiss. Katniss' own hands buried themselves in Peeta's soft golden curls, scraping along his scalp as she ground her lower body against his, searching for relief.

"Ach, lass," he panted as Katniss trailed her lips along his chiseled jaw, "I must have ye, or I'll surely perish from the wanting."

His words, spoken with such hunger, served as kindling to the fire that already burned deep inside her belly. Katniss straightened, and with her heart pounding in her throat, pulled her suede tunic over her head, revealing her breasts to Peeta's heated gaze.

" _Brèagha_ …" Peeta sighed reverently as he cupped the soft mounds in his large palms. Calloused thumbs wound about the dusky peaks in slow, torturous circles, making them pucker and push towards his waiting mouth. Inarticulate sounds poured from her throat as Peeta's warm tongue replaced his hands, lavishing attention on first one, then the other breast. She held his head close, never wanting the blissful feelings to stop.

Katniss, unaware, mimicked the motion of his tongue with her hips, spiking the heat between them to a fever pitch. Peeta kept her steady as she gave herself over to her primal instincts, grinding her pelvis into his as she climbed to the heights. Suddenly, with an arch of his hips, Peeta helped her reach the precipice, and she came with a scream that echoed throughout the valley.

Boneless, Katniss sagged against Peeta as she returned to Earth, her breath coming in little pants. He chuckled as he leaned back, letting her sprawl across his chest while stroking her bare back.

"I believe it's your turn," she finally managed after some moments.

"Nay, lass," he answered, "Watching ye fall apart in me arms is more than enough to keep me satisfied for ages."

With a stubborn tilt to her chin, Katniss stood on wobbly legs, and keeping her grey eyes locked with his blue ones, removed her deer-skin leggings to stand nude before him.

"I need you, Peeta."

Now it was Peeta's turn to stare. Slowly his azure eyes raked her bare form, from her slim ankles to the turn of her knee, and up to the shadowed valley between her thighs. He lingered on the little 'o' of her belly button, the perfect tear-drop shape of her breasts, and finally back to her shining silver gaze. She flushed under his scrutiny, the pink bloom spreading across her lovely olive skin, staining it dark rose in the dappled moonlight.

"Dear God in Heaven."

He pulled off his boots and stockings then stood, his shaking hand hovering over the clasp holding his kilt together. "Are ye sure?" he asked in a tight voice.

"Yes." Katniss replied with no hesitation.

Barely before the single word left her lips, the clasp came free, allowing the tartan to fall from Peeta's hips in a whisper. Katniss swallowed thickly, overwhelmed at the sight of his beauty as he pulled the linen shirt over his shoulders and tossed it aside.

It seemed like only a matter of seconds before she was in his arms, his mouth plundering hers as his hands mapped the silken landscape of her body. Her blood hummed with joy at the feel of his velvety ridge, hot and insistent, trapped between their bodies and the secret place between her legs throbbed with longing.

"Peeta, now," she pleaded, frantic with need, and blinded by desire.

Wordlessly he pulled her back down onto the plaid, positioning her above him. Katniss held her breath as she sank down onto his hardness, reveling in the feel of him stretching her walls, and filling her completely. It was a homecoming, unlike anything she'd experienced before; certainly not with Gale, and she almost wept at how right it felt to be with Peeta in this way. They fit together perfectly, like two halves of the same heart, finally beating as one.

"Katniss." Her name was a prayer on his lips; the soft burr of his accent drew out the end like a caress.

As much as she would have loved to stay this way forever, with Peeta held so deep inside her body they were almost one as an ancient rhythm thrummed in her veins, she was compelled to move. Languidly she began to rock back and forth, stimulating them both with each cyclic movement of her hips. Peeta planted his feet, tilting her forward just enough so that the he grazed her womb with each thrust, causing a deep pleasure to radiate in waves to the very tips of her fingers and toes. In almost no time at all, Katniss felt the tell-tale tingle start deep within her being, and it spread as the coil wound tighter and tighter. She slowed her pace, trying to draw out the inevitable, but with a shift of Peeta's hips the coil snapped, sending her over the edge once more, into sweet oblivion.

Katniss quickly recovered from her second release as Peeta quickened his pace, thrusting madly as she clenched her walls around him. Gaelic tumbled like a waterfall of nonsense from his lips, but Katniss could tell they were words of reverence, of affection. Sensing he was holding back, she leaned down, taking him deeper inside her still throbbing body, and whispered, "Let go, _mo chride_."

With her encouragement, the dam broke loose, and Peeta's hips bucked once, twice before he finally shouted his own release to the heavens.

Later, sated and drowsy, he wrapped his plaid around their rapidly cooling bodies and locked his arms around Katniss. As sleep dragged her deeper into its embrace, she heard Peeta whisper, " _Tha gaol agam ort_."

 **XXXXX**

The incessant buzz of her alarm clock woke Katniss with a start. Groaning, she slapped at the plastic annoyance until she successfully hit the snooze button. In the empty silence, she rubbed her eyes, trying to cling to the last remnants of the dream—or was it a memory? After so many years, it was getting harder to distinguish actual events from the foolish wishes of her heart.

Katniss glanced guiltily over to the empty side of the bed once occupied by her husband. The dreams had started not long after Gale's death, and she didn't know what to make of them. The fact that this last one had felt so real finally made her see that it was time to stop trying to forget the past, and the man she left behind.

With a sigh, she pushed the twisted covers off of her body, which still pulsed with after-effects of the orgasms brought on by her dream, and headed for the shower. There was no doubt in her mind that today was going to be a long day. Perhaps the longest since she returned from her incredible journey all those years ago.

 **XXXXX**

Katniss' dream made her that much more nervous throughout the day. She felt jittery when her assistant, Annie, walked into her office to remind her of one patient or the other. She dropped her stethoscope and pen, misplaced her chart and generally had to take a physical pause just to shake the memory of Peeta's hands on her body and the ghost of his lips on her skin.

" _Mo dubh_."

He was with her, now more than ever and this intersection between her life now and the life that couldn't be was making her close to nonfunctional.

Katniss paused in her tasks to steep peppermint in her tea. As she waited for the leaves to leech their essence into the water, she dabbed a few drops of lavender oil on her pulse points, taking a long drag of the floral aroma, hoping that it would help still the riot in her belly.

When the final patient left for the evening, Katniss could not have been more relieved. She rubbed her eyes, squinting tiredly into the fluorescent lights, attempting to blink away the fatigue. She was aware of Annie's eyes on her and Katniss might have even been tempted to share her burdens with the petite brunette. But the moment the words came into her mind, locked, loaded and ready to be expelled from her lips, all credulity fled her. There was no way anyone would believe her. She had lived her day-to-day life of the last twenty years with an alternate universe in her heart and the cells of her body but the experience was so preposterous, it became impossible to share it with anyone else.

In addition to the exhaustion and longing, there was also the guilt. Gale, her husband of more than twenty five years, had recently passed away. She had tried to make a life with him as best she could after she lost Peeta but Gale didn't stand a chance. No man in her life could have possibly competed with what she had experienced with the blue-eyed Scotsman. It was to Gale's credit that, if he ever understood how very much at a disadvantage he had been because of her feelings for Peeta, he tried never to let on. He took her back after her disappearance and loved the daughter she'd fathered with another man and embraced the family he loved, accepting with resignation that there were parts of Katniss he would never have.

 **XXXXX**

She had agreed to meet with her sister, Prim, that evening to begin sorting Gale's things. Still rattled by the most vivid dream she'd had of Peeta yet, Katniss knew she would not be able to take the journey of purging her late husband's things alone. She would not have dreamed of asking her daughter, Sophia, to do this with her. It would have been too much for the girl, who was still smarting from the loss of the man she believed was her father.

Katniss drove from the salmon-colored, sun dappled complex that was home to her clinic and headed down the interstate to their home in Venice, too distracted to curse the usual bad driving and dense rush-hour traffic that always clogged the roads around Los Angeles. Her mind took her back to her now deceased husband. Gale and Katniss had married as soon as she'd earned her two-year degree as an R.N. and promptly enlisted – she in the Air Force, and he in the Army. They both came from very impoverished backgrounds, having grown up and lived in the tight-knit Mohawk community remaining near the small town of Stillwater in upstate New York, with all the deprivations that Indian life entailed. As it often was with most young people who see no way out of the systemic poverty into which they are born, both Gale and Katniss knew their best shot at paying for their remaining college education was to enlist. Because of Katniss' medical training, she was sent on her first tour to Iraq while Gale remained stationed at Fort Hamilton, NY.

Over the course of the next four years, they visited each other on furloughs and leave, usually for only a few days at a time. It had been a hard separation for two newlyweds, even if they'd grown up together as childhood friends. Katniss had seen a lot of bloodshed and treated wounds for personnel who would return home to tell stories of ambushes, raids, and wholesale slaughter, innocent Iraqis falling victim to the civil war that erupted after the Americans wiped out the only system holding their fragmented country together. Their nightmares would be peopled by the dead from all sides and exacerbated by head traumas from IEDs and explosions that were the trademark of this war.

Upon her discharge, Gale and Katniss both realized they had changed in deeply fundamental ways. In an effort to reclaim that part of themselves that remembered they loved each other, they'd organized a journey to visit the major battle sites of the American Revolution in the Northeast, following the trajectory of their Mohawk ancestors as they fought alongside the British. Gale was a history fanatic and Katniss had developed a keen interest in the medicinal herbs of her ancestors. It was meant as a kind of second honeymoon that would combine their mutual passion for camping and hiking with their individual interests in history and herbology.

There was no way of knowing that morning in June, when they set out for their excursion, what would be the far-reaching consequences of that journey, so innocently planned.

Katniss often thought back to that fateful summer day, and wondered if she had the chance to choose all over again - if she had the opportunity to retrace the steps of her destiny, with all the tears and death that it entailed - would she choose differently? Would she turn back from the cave, from the ancient melody that had called to her very soul? To spare herself the agony of what came afterwards, of what still came to her every night in the guise of a dream from which waking brought no relief. Would she have turned away and made her way up the craggy meadow instead and left that fate behind her?

Katniss knew, with the misery that comes with certainty, that despite the heartbreak, the loss, the bone-crushing grief, she wouldn't change a thing. She couldn't change her heart, could never purge it of the love she had found. So she simply resigned herself to living each day as if she was one breath away from madness, and embraced the pain that would stalk her all the days of her life.

 **XXXXX**

Prim was already waiting outside of Katniss' house, leaning against her Prius, listening to her IPOD. Katniss couldn't help but smile at her sister. Peeta would have found her bonnie, with her long, gold-spun blond hair and smooth, porcelain skin which she jealously guarded from the California sun with giant hats and a seemingly unlimited supply of sun-block. Prim was light where Katniss was dark and, if it weren't for the high cheekbones and same almond shaped eyes and full lips, no one would have guessed they were sisters. Katniss was olive-skinned and dark-haired, revealing her Indian heritage as much as her sister was the exact duplicate of their white mother.

But Prim was her first great love - Katniss had raised her after her father died and her mother descended into alcoholism and depression. She and Prim shared a rare, powerful bond, as if they were both mother and father and sister and friend to each other, an intimacy that nothing in her life had matched, different in quality from that profound connection she'd shared with Peeta. And yet, despite that, her sister had no idea about Peeta. He was so close to the surface of everything today that Katniss feared the day would not pass without invoking his name, a name she'd refused to say aloud for twenty long years.

Upon seeing her big sister, Prim leapt off the car and threw her arms around her. "How was work?" she said as she helped Katniss with her computer bag.

"The usual pre-op," Katniss said evasively. "Did you leave Claire and Roger with Rory?"

Prim perked up at the mention of her husband and children's name. "Yep! Even though Roger thinks he's all grown up. Claire wasn't a stinker at that age! As soon as Roger turned 13, an alien came and replaced him with a grumpy, sulky teenager."

"It's the age, Prim. It'll pass," Katniss said as she fumbled with the house key. She was shaking and trying her very best to control herself.

"I know but boy puberty is just weirder and smellier than girl puberty!" she said in exasperation. Katniss couldn't help but smile at her sister who, even at the ripe old age of 41, would always be Katniss' baby.

"Buy him a good deodorant and a pile of washcloths you don't care about replacing and leave him to his changes. He'll be back to normal at around sixteen," Katniss said reassuringly, having dropped her keys altogether.

"Sixteen! I won't survive it," Prim bent down to pick up Katniss' keys. "You're a mess today. Have you eaten?"

Katniss thought hard about her day and realized, in her stupor over her dream, she had failed to eat anything for lunch. "No, I don't suppose I have."

Prim pushed the door open after successfully unlocking it. "Go take a shower and change. I'll whip up something for us both to eat. You look like your sugar is low,"

Katniss nodded, trudging up the stairs of the townhouse she'd shared with Gale after they relocated from the East coast. The move was in good part a result of Gale's lucrative job offer after he'd finished business school but it was also an attempt to get Katniss out of the Northeast and away from the memories that had threatened to drown out her life with Gale. After Katniss was forced to leave Peeta, she and Gale had managed to build a life together that ran parallel in every way, interests that intersected frequently, for they were not so different from each other. Except her heart was the true traitor. For had she never met Peeta, her marriage to Gale would have been a marriage of true minds, warm and companionable and near perfect. She had shared a bed with a man for more than two decades while her heart and body longed for another. She'd done her best with Gale but deep down inside, she knew he deserved more and Gale knew this also. The relocation had been an attempt to heal the rift caused by the resentment of the interruption of their lives, a resentment he tried his best to hide from his wife.

She attempted to wash all that away as she showered but instead of clearing her mind, her thoughts became more frenzied and images of those years she'd spent with Peeta began to pile up on her - riding through battlefield after battlefield, hiding in the ancient forests of New York State before the idea of developments and cookie-cutter communities had even been conceived. The days full of danger, the nights full of her Highlander. Peeta was a sensitive man, an artist and mystic at heart but a man of his times nonetheless. In some ways, he would not have won prizes as a progressive man by modern standards. But that primitive possessiveness, the way he lay claim to her, body and soul, with the arrogant imperiousness of a man who knew that he'd found the woman marked for him - even now, it filled Katniss' veins with heat.

In a way she hadn't done in twenty years, Katniss closed her eyes and focused on the way the water ran over her body, the rivulets of liquid racing across her now burning skin. She imagined the steam of the hot bath was Peeta's breath in her ear. He was behind her in the small tent he'd built to hide them from the eyes of the other men in his regiment, her back to his broad chest, resting on her side against his thick arm. She brought her hands up to her breasts and suddenly, they were not her small ones but his large, callous-covered palms, kneading her as he slipped inside of her. Katniss knew only abandon as he grasped her breast with one hand and slid his other down her taut body, ending at the juncture of her thighs, searching for the place she'd shown him, the place that would make everything around her melt away. He whispered in her ear, a thrilling litany of Gaelic that she did not fully understand but fed the fire between her thighs, the cadences of that melodious language matching the thrusting of his hips and the circles he drew over her clit. It was harmonic music made manifest in physical form, the crescendo building as he orchestrated her release.

" _I dinna care from whence you come, mo dubh. You are mine. Always_ ," he hissed, his own breath quickening in his lungs. Something in her modern soul briefly flared up in protest before being crushed under the weight of those words. For Katniss desired nothing more than to be swallowed up by him, longing to disappear from the world and become a part of his being. His long, thick blond hair fell over her shoulder as he lay kisses along her cheek and neck, the hairs from his strong arms tickling her sweat drenched skin as he continued to stroke and rub her until she was forced to bite down on her fist to keep her shouts of pleasure from the ears of the other men in the regiment.

When they'd shuddered in their shared release, Peeta pulled her closer to him, if that was at all possible, and Katniss could feel him shake his head behind her. " _I ken now what a fool I am at your feet,_ Mo dubh _. Ye are mine but ye own me also, body and soul_."

With those words floating in her ears, Katniss came violently under the hot jets of the shower, sinking to her knees as her body shook, much like it had that day. It was the devil's bargain, for she had handed over her soul to him that night, and every other night they'd shared together. And though she was able to go on all these years without him, it was indeed a trade, for he gave her his own also, on the grass-covered fields of Lake Champlain in the year of our Lord, 1775.

XXXXX

"Took you long enough!" said Prim as she served Katniss a heaping plate filled with a thick wedge of vegetable omelet, home fries and sauteed peppers and onions, just like she knew her big sister liked them. Katniss had managed to sit on her bed long enough to regain the use of her limbs after the memory of Peeta had melted the bones from her body. However, instead of leaving her in a state of blissful relaxation, she was as tense as one of her strung bows, the ones she used at the archery field where she went for target practice on the weekends. Katniss was relieved when Prim uncorked a bottle of Chianti and poured a generous portion into a wine glass.

They settled in the living room, Katniss in the striped sofa that she'd bought from an antique shop several years earlier while Prim reclined with her legs tucked under her on the opposite end. Katniss never let anyone eat in the living room but tonight, she seemed to have forgotten all the rules she'd constructed for herself to survive this alternate reality, the one that did not contain her heart's deepest desire.

"So, if you want, we could start with the garage - maybe the things in there will be less emotionally charged," her sister said gently as Katniss picked at her food. Getting no response to her idea, Prim changed tack and suggested the bedroom, if Katniss was up to it. Katniss, meanwhile, downed the wine in one, long gulp and heard her sister's voice as a dull roar, like the waves of the Hudson river lapping against the stones of the shoreline, much like they'd done when she walked along its banks with Peeta.

Without warning, Katniss felt the tears slide down her face. She thought there was no limit to what she could endure, for her daughter's sake and the sake of her family. She was sure that she could honor both Peeta and her sacrifice by living the way he had wanted her to live.

 _"Ye have the hardest part, Mo dubh. I will die but you must live without me. But live, ye shall, for I will it, for the sake of what we shared and for the bairn ye carry."_

Suddenly, every word, every expression of endearment, his desperate entreaties that she live at all costs, the trump card that he'd held, the only thing that had had the power to force her away from him, growing in her belly - all these things came crashing down on her and soon Prim's arms were around her while she sobbed as she'd not been able to do for twenty long years.

"Oh, Katniss! I'm so sorry!" Prim repeated, over and over as she rocked her sister. Katniss let it flow out of her, the endless well of untapped longing that she'd held in check for the sake of her daughter and her husband. She raised her clear grey eyes, filled with shadows and ghosts, to seek out her sister's and she knew she could not contain what she held inside of her any longer.

"Prim, honey. Sit down," she said between sniffles.

Prim obeyed her sister, settling into the spot next to her. She held Katniss' hand in expectation, worry etched across her lovely face.

"I have something to tell you, something unbelievable but you have to promise me first that whatever I say, you will wait until I'm done to ask any questions. Okay?"

Prim's pressed her lips together and nodded.

"Promise?" Katniss insisted.

"Yes, of course. You're scaring me now!"

Katniss wanted to tell her sister that she didn't know the half of it but instead she said, "You need to understand that I'm not crazy. My daughter is proof that I'm not making any of this up. It sounds unreal, but I swear to you on my daughter's life that it is all true."

The sharp intake of Prim's breath was enough to convince Katniss that her sister would hear her out. Oaths were a big deal for their people and were not undertaken lightly. And they rarely were made on the lives of their children unless there was absolutely no doubt that the truth was in play. After a moment of consideration, Katniss decided to give Prim the unvarnished truth.

"I've never spoken to anyone about those three years I disappeared."

"No," Prim said solemnly, the memory of those years etched in the lines of fear on her face. "We never pressed the issue because we were afraid...to make you remember…"

"Well, I wasn't abducted," Katniss said firmly.

"You weren't? But everyone was sure you'd been kidnapped and the trauma made you forget everything!" Prim stood up and paced the living room. "It was in all the newspapers, how you disappeared into the woods without a trace and then reappeared, with no memory of what had happened to you!"

"You said you were going to listen without questioning me!"

"Yes, but this?" Prim exclaimed, her eyes flashing in anger. "Do you know what we went through - your family, Gale...me? It was worse than you dying because there was always that hope you would come back. Or worse yet...the horror of wondering what you were going through!"

"Please?" Katniss implored, holding out her hand to encourage her sister to sit down again. "You promised."

Sighing heavily, Prim reluctantly sat down again.

"I wasn't abducted, not the entire time. It's more than that. I spent most of that time with the 21st Regiment, the Royal Scots Fusiliers."

"Royal Scots? I've never heard of a regiment like that!" exclaimed Prim.

"That's because they fought alongside the British during the American Revolution." At this, Prim's face became pale with shock. "And Peeta…" Katniss' voice faltered as she finally said his name out loud, "I lived with Brigadier Captain Peeta Mellark for those two years, until I was forced to leave him in 1776."

"1776!" she sputtered. "What do you mean, 1776?!" Prim exclaimed.

"There's more. Gale...Gale isn't Sophia's father," Katniss stammered.

Prim's mouth fell open in shock, closing and opening like a gaping fish gasping for oxygen.

"Did Gale know this?" she asked after several stunned moments of silence.

Katniss nodded. "He knew almost everything that I'm about to tell you now."

"And he believed you?" Prim asked as she rose slowly out of her seat again, moving as if she were persuading each individual muscle to cooperate. Katniss made to stop her again but when Prim walked slowly over to the liquor cabinet and grabbed the unopened bottle of Jack Daniels and two shot glasses, Katniss settled back in her seat in approval.

"Fuck, Katniss, if I didn't know you..." Prim fell heavily into her seat. "1776? A Brigadier Captain? I think I'm going to need the hard stuff because this sounds like it's going to be one hell of a story…"

 **XXXXX**

 **Glossary of Gaelic terms -**

 _ **Serachtuague - Mohawk Indian name for the Saratoga region of New York State**_

 _ **Mo dubh**_ **-** _ **my dark one**_

 _ **Brèagh - beautiful**_

 _ **Mo chride - my heart**_

 _ **Tha gaol agam ort - I love you**_

 **A/N - I feel the same way Prim does. From the moment I began reading** _ **Outlander,**_ **I knew I would not easily tear the idea of that story out of my head. It became obvious, by the end of the third novel,** _ **Voyager**_ **, that this story, as with all stories of frustrated love and overcoming almost impossible odds, had an Everlark fiction waiting to be written. So, FamousFremus - being as captivated by the idea of a Scot who would sacrifice everything for his** _ **Mo dubh**_ **as we were by a teenage boy handing over his life to save the girl he'd loved since he was five - decided to give this iteration a go. It will be a multi-chapter endeavor.**

 **Please note this is a primarily an Everlark fanfiction, inspired by** _ **Outlander**_ **. It is in no way intended to be a part of the** _ **Outlander**_ **** **Canon.** _ **Outlander**_ **** **(as well as** _ **The Hunger Games**_ **) are not ours, nor do we have any legal rights over the original characters. We are simply paying homage to two great stories in the service of a worthwhile cause. Thank you for donating to make it happen.**

 **A special thanks to my amazing co-writer and friend, FamousFremus, for the research, knowledge of the Saratoga area and amazing support. I adore this lovely woman so much and have thoroughly enjoyed writing with her!**

 **Also thanks to our betas - solasvioletta, bubblegum1425, peetabreadgirl and fellow Outlander groupies, madambeth and court81981 for their hard work in cleaning up our writing. Also an extra special thanks to tigriss92 for her generosity in lending us her incredible manip. Her body of art is nothing short of breathtaking A final thanks to nighlockinthecave for taking that materia prima and making it into a gorgeous banner. She's made so many banners for me and is truly one of best banner-makers in the fandom and a dear, beautiful friend to me.**

 **A/N 2 - My ridiculously talented co-writer, titania522, has pretty much said it all, so I will just add that I am eternally grateful to her for letting me tag along on this adventure. Hopefully the finished product will be something that fans of both** _ **The Hunger Games**_ **and** _ **Outlander**_ **will enjoy.**

 **A huge thank you needs to go to Streetlightlove1 and Mr. Street for the tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work that goes into S2SL, and an even bigger thank you needs to go to all of those who donated to this very worthy cause. Pediatric cancer doesn't stand a chance against us!**


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